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St. Louis Blues right wing Scottie Upshall (9) celebrates his goal against the Detroit Red Wings with teammates in the second period. St. Louis won 6-1 over Detroit on Saturday at Little Caesars Arena.(Photo: Paul Sancya, Associated Press)

Red Wings coach discusses his team's standout play in the first two periods of a 6-1 loss.
Ted Kulfan

“Certainly through the first 40 (minutes), we played as well as we probably have,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “Honestly, the 40 in totality was better than the other night against Winnipeg (in a Red Wings win).

“The pucks didn’t go in one way, and went in the other way.”

St. Louis wound up with 22 shots, doing their damage efficiently and capitalizing on some quirky bounces and deflections.

Frans Nielsen scored in the third period, the Wings’ only goal on 29 shots.

The Blues opened in the scoring in the first period on Schwartz’s 14th goal, capping off a nice passing play.

Joel Edmundson found Schwartz entering the zone and Schwartz skated into the slot and beat Howard at 11:50.

The Red Wings had two power plays in the opening 20 minutes but failed to get a puck past Allen despite good pressure — including one, just before Schwartz’s goal.

“We had some chances on that power play and got scored on right away,” Nielsen said. “It’s tough, but our mentality was better. After they scored, we kept playing hard.

“These games are tough ones to swallow.”

The Blues broke the game open in the second period, with three goals on six shots.

Sobotka made it 2-0 at 4:07 of the second period, with a great wrist shot from near the dot off the rush.

Upshall extended the lead to 3-0 at 6:17, a breakaway goal, after a Niklas Kronwall turnover at the blue line.

Bouwmeester capped the second-period barrage with his first goal, at 16:26, snapping a shot from the blue line that Howard may have been screened on.

“I’ve been frustrated and mad the way we’ve been playing lately,” captain Henrik Zetterberg said. “But today, you don’t want to lose at home 6-1, but the first two periods we did a lot good things but the puck ended up in our net rather than their net.”